"Awakening Inside The Matrix"
An essay by Dave Oshana

This essay is one of many talks by Dave Oshana which are available on the
Enlightenment Now web site.

This article describes Awakening, Teachers and the Matrix, and a way to
consciously connect to your Self.

Following my last Avalon article, a reader reported a profound Awakening:

Reader Reports Profound Awakening

I really enjoyed your article, The Pursuit of Happiness, in Avalon. I
had the same experience of "I think I am enlightened" a few hours after
reading it. The feeling has lasted 24 hours now, including a big day back at
work after a holiday. So I'm hoping it will persist!

Who knows? It doesn't feel like I'm fooling myself. I still have moods and
get tired, even angry, but the sense of a deep well of love and peace within me
seems to be in place....

I have a photo of Ramana Maharshi in my study and now he looks at me and
says, "Mm, you see what I mean!" and he laughs! Ha!

Hotting Potatoes

Awakening happens when you simply recognize your true identity. It is a
natural, blissful and effortless state. It's remarkable that it does not happen
more often. Typically seekers tend to visit teachers for many years, gently
cooking on the inside like jacket potatoes, before they make sense of who they
are.

Ripe

When the time is ripe, a phrase, a look or a barking dog can be the last
piece in the jigsaw puzzle -- the thing that tips you over 'The Edge'. What
Edge? The Edge of Who You Always Thought You Were.

Kerplunk

Teaching is like playing Kerplunk, the game where marbles are held in the air
by a network of straws. Each time you visit a teacher, another straw is pulled
out, until you eventually lose all of your 'marbles'.

Game Over

And then 'The Game' is over. 'Losing ones marbles' is slang for 'losing ones
mind', and is equated with madness. However, the mind is the origin of much of
the madness that we see in the world. By contrast, the heart is the source of
much of the beauty that we witness around us.

Wait for The Pause......

There was a sign at the Rajneesh Ashram: 'Leave your shoes and minds at
the door'. This means: 'Be still. Be quiet. Pause.'

And pause a bit longer...

Empty Space

Awakened Teacher Morihei Uyeshiba founded Aikido, a spiritual martial art. He
could lead any attacker into empty space. In one demonstration, he slipped out
of a circle of American Military Policemen who were intent on restraining him.

Control Freaked

You are not in control of your mind. It controls you. You are not in control
of your behavior -- your mind is.

Mind Control

Demonstration: Can correctly report what your third thought from now will be?

Body Control

You are aware of thoughts, bodily sensations, emotions and intuitions.

Optical Illusions

What is that 'You'? Feel it.

That 'You' is Consciousness, your true Self -- which is aware of everything
that is currently in your field of awareness.

Can you see the world as it is? Why do optical illusions exist?

The Rules

The mind uses rules to interpret the packets of light that the optical nerves
receive. Artists have to turn off the visual rules, to see the world as it
really is. But there are also behavioural, perceptual and emotional rules. They
were installed at birth.

Can you turn all the rules off?

(Remember to stop at red lights.)

What's your name?

You have a rule: 'My name is...' - That rule is in your mind.

Where are you?

Do you point to your body because it is the object through which everyone
connects with you?

Do you feel alienated?

If you stop trying to change the way you are, then, and only then, will you
feel completely accepted, and at home.

Do you know who you are?

Always

Pause a moment. It will become apparent. When you look at a 3D picture,
comprised of many apparently random coloured dots, after a while a picture
emerges. It has always been there.

Light

Defocus. Relax your mind. Something amazing happens. The mists of confusion
clear. Being, which is the totality of reality -- everything that you could
possibly be aware of in this very moment -- begins to shine brightly. It is seen
as light in the perceptual field. It appears to be on the inside and the
outside.

If you do not see light in this moment, it does not matter; it is there
anyway. It is an epi-phenomenon. It becomes visible as awareness expands, but it
can get distracting, so it gets tuned out. Lights are more frequently associated
with mystical experiences than Emptiness, which is just as fundamental, because
they sound more comprehensible.

My Awakening

During my own Awakening, there was light in every nook and cranny of my room,
mind, heart and body. There was no darkness anywhere. My eyes were closed but I
could see that in the middle of the room was a single naked light bulb. It
seemed to say, 'This experience, just like this light bulb, is no big deal.'

More Light

People have seen light coming from me and themselves during meetings. One
person saw light coming from their body, and another flames from their
fingertips. A Christian man I met on Glastonbury High St now sees light
everywhere. (And he still complains about it.) I saw a luminous white fog around
John de Ruiter after a long conversation. He said 'Your inner eye sees the Truth
that it hears.'

Ten years ago, I felt balls of light hover in and out of the top my head. It
felt spacious and comfortable. My companion reported the same. It resembled the
scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind where UFOs dance above a mountain.

Such encounters with Light are inevitable. Just when you least expect it --
there it is! You are surrounded by Light. You exist in your Being. It is all
energy.

Filters

The unawakened mind blocks such experiences, by employing filters in the same
way that, in Star Trek, the Starship Enterprise uses force-field shields to
repel alien communion (xenophobia?), and James T. Kirk gets to stay, and think,
like an American (and thereby misses out on Cosmic Consciousness).

The unawakened mind is cut off from the universe. It is in darkness. However,
the universe is acting on the rest of your being. So while you sleep on the
beach, your body is getting a tan, or sunburn.

Another example: your mind tells you that you want to eat a large Mississippi
Mud Pie, but your stomach knows better, and vomits the lot up.

Identity

Your Identity, which is a sub-program of your mind, also gets your body into
trouble on a daily basis. When you feel bad about thinking certain thoughts or
having certain feelings -- that is the Identity getting upset. It then causes
mental and emotional confusion, even paralysis, and dumps toxins, creating chaos
in the physical system.

It also creates fatigue by using up valuable mental energy, to rationalise
away common experiences like intuition, synchronicity and healing. Why does it
bother? Upbringing!

The Illusion

The Awakened mind is open to the true nature of reality. The unawakened mind
is closed. Locked into its own private cinema, it actively generates the
Illusion, the vision of what it wishes reality would be. The Illusion, or the
Matrix, is the dream that pulsates through the neurons of all conditioned human
beings.

The Matrix

In the movie The Matrix, Keanu Reeves dreams that he leads a normal life.
But, in reality, he has been in a coma from birth. His body has always been used
to provide bio-energy for 'The Matrix', an Artificial Intelligence program that
replicates itself in the minds of men.

Fortunately, a group of rebels liberate him from his watery grave, a sensory
deprivation tank-cum-battery cell. He then realises that he never was an office
worker. It had all been a dream, and waking up is looking like a nightmare.

'The Oracle', an average-looking housewife with divinatory powers, predicts
that Keanu is 'The One', i.e. he will smash the Matrix and free all enslaved
beings.

But first he has to discover his full potential. He cannot fulfil his mission
until he transcends the Matrix's physical laws. The Matrix, by controlling the
mind, can kill the human body. He risks his life, liberty and sanity every time
he enters it.

Is that what happens every time you go out into the world?

We do not choose our destinies.

I never wanted to be a spiritual teacher. I used to change my religion on an
hourly basis. I could not teach because I knew nothing. Now, I have to teach,
whether I like it or not. When I go to sleep, I am still teaching. Everything
radiates energy. All energy is information. Everything is educating everything
else!

The Ancient Hindu scriptures suggest that Awakening is rare. However,
Awakened teachers appear to be everywhere nowadays. Osho Rajneesh sought to
create a Buddha-field comprised of enlightened beings.

Has that time has arrived?

Awakening has always been here. It is your Self.

Your Being resonates with all Enlightened energies because you are
Enlightened.

Are you sitting comfortably?

Discomfort arises when you try to compress the infinite being that you are
into the finiteness of the human identity that you pretend to be. The whole of
reality is the Truth.

Have you ever been destructive to yourself or others?

When the Identity cannot accept reality then it screams 'This is cannot be
true', and does violence to anything or anyone that contradicts it, including
its own mind. [Does anyone remember John McEnroe's outbursts on the tennis
courts?]